“We sat on a towel on the sand, near a white-blue pedalo, smoked some cigarettes and drank an alcohol-free beer”. The night of 25 August began in the most romantic way possible for the two young Poles, but suddenly, everything changed. “After about an hour a boy appeared before us, and in broken English asked us where we were from. ‘Poland’, we replied. He told us to give him our wallets and phones”. Once we realized what his intentions were, we got up to leave, but he hit my friend in the face, making him fall to the ground, while three other people emerged from the darkness. They immobilized me and threw me backwards onto the sand. They hit my face, my head and my body.” The girl recounted her 20 minutes of terror to investigators with the help of a Polish interpreter, and then confirmed and signed her statement.

“Where are you? They’re going to kill me” “The three of them held me by the throat, almost choking me. Two of them pinned down my legs, while the third did the rest, and then the other two took their turn... I heard my friend, who had been attacked, calling out to me ‘Where are you?’, while I begged him to help me... I was exhausted but conscious. They took me to the water’s edge to revive me, and after I came to, I was dragged back up the beach, immobilized face down in the sand and raped again”. Her friend was nearby and remembered the moment: “I could hear her calling out: ‘Help me, they’re going to kill me’. I pretended to faint and they started to worry I might be dead ...” Statements given by those involved in the sexual assaults – the three rape victims, including the Peruvian transsexual, and the four suspects – have been submitted to magistrates in Rimini and Bologna, who have confirmed the detention of Guerlin Butungu, the 20-year-old Congolese considered the gang leader, and for his three accomplices, all minors.

“I held the Pole down”Yesterday, in front of the magistrate, Butungu, a Congolese national, provided a new version of the facts. “I wasn’t asleep, but neither did I rape the Polish woman. I held her friend down while the others went over to her.” As for the rape of the Peruvian prostitute, he claimed that: “it was not rape because we discussed the price. I was going to pay her. It was the other three who raped her”. He said they didn’t reach an agreement on the price. The Peruvian has given a different version: “The Congolese hit my head with a bottle and dragged me through the bushes by my hair. He said he would kill me, and screamed to the others to cut my face. They raped me in turns the first time, then Butungu again and one of the brothers”.

Butungu accused of lying by accomplicesThe 16-year-old Nigerian accused Butungu, saying that the latter told them to hold down the Polish man so that he could rape the girl. But since he was unable to pin her down on his own, he got the two brothers to help him. They in turn have laid all the blame on Butungu.

Connection with previous attackFor investigating magistrate Stefano Celli, the most reliable version is that of the victims, which, as he wrote in his request to confirm detention of the suspects, “is backed up by all the evidence we currently have”. Butungu’s position may however worsen further, since he has also been identified by the victim of another attack on a couple living in Varese on 12 August. The woman, a thirty-year-old Ethiopian, is sure: “Yes, I saw the photo, and Butungu is the one who wanted to rape me.”